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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28832553">phoenix rising</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mscrwth/pseuds/Mscrwth'>Mscrwth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Battlestar Galactica (2003)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Female Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, New Caprica</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:13:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,779</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28832553</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mscrwth/pseuds/Mscrwth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a galpalficathon, prompt: Laura Roslin and Kara Thrace / smoking; "last one left</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Laura Roslin/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>phoenix rising</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s been sitting here for the last five hours, undisturbed. The few people that visit this section of the ship hardly seem to notice her and she likes it fine that way. They’re too wrapped up in their own grief, their own guilt. The few people that do notice her, give her a wide berth, that’s fine with her too.</p><p>She stares at the wall opposite her and doesn’t feel a thing. It’s plastered with the photographs of the dead. Used to be, after the initial attacks, that she didn’t know any of those faces, they were other people’s loved ones, they didn’t mean anything to her, except in some abstract way. The way billions didn’t mean anything.</p><p>After months of running away from the Cylons, fighting them whenever they could, a second layer had gradually been added. These faces she did know. BB, Jo Jo, Reilly, Beano, Dipper, Flattop, Crashdown, Shepherd, Fireball, so many others, all lost to them. And now, a third layer, all the people they lost on New Caprica, Maya and Isis among them, Duck and Nora. They smile at her from across the hallway and still she doesn’t feel a thing.</p><p>To Kara, it’s as if the occupation happened without her. Leoben nabbed her the moment the Cylons landed and she’d been imprisoned right up until the Admiral pulled his crazy ass stunt and rescued them. She’s heard stories since, of people being detained and questioned, tortured even, Thigh and Roslin first among them, and all she feels is rage at having been denied her opportunity to protect them, rescue them maybe, thwart the Cylons, shoot them down, blow them up, anything.</p><p>Everything that Leoben did to her feels almost trivial compared to this one thing, that he robbed her of her chance to fight, it’s what she does best after all.</p><p>She’s so lost in thought, lost in her own private rage, that the sound of footsteps approaching at first hardly registers. When it does, the click clack of high heels against the metal grating of the hallway takes on a familiar cadence, though it’s slightly off.</p><p>“I like the new hair.” Roslin’s voice floats towards her, strong and sure as ever. Kara glances up and sees her dressed in one of her sharp business suits, presidential façade already back in place. Kara wonders how she does it, how she does any of it, the woman should give pointers. She herself has cut her hair in an effort to look and therefore maybe feel more like her old self, Starbuck, the invincible, but so far, it hasn’t helped.</p><p>There’s a long silence neither of them feels compelled to break. Kara likes this about the older woman. Down on New Caprica, before the occupation, they’d gone on frequent walks together, up into the woods, comfortable with the silence between them. She’d assigned herself to Roslin’s side, knowing the Old Man would want someone looking out for her. Roslin, after all, had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming and, with a vengeful Baltar in power, was more than likely to land herself in a world of trouble. During their long flight across the heavens, Kara had been at times frustrated, intimidated, in awe of and angry with the former President, getting to know the woman behind the Office had been a whole new adventure. She’d turned out to be funny, impulsive, a great cook, a jazz enthusiast, and somewhat of a practical joker.</p><p>And she could hold her tongue too, when silence was called for.</p><p>Unfortunately, she has apparently decided, this is not one of those times.</p><p>“Last one left, how about we share?” Roslin asks. Kara doesn’t look up and a moment later a fat, hand rolled cigarette lands in her lap.</p><p>“Only good thing that came from that frakking planet.” Kara says as she rolls the cigarette between thumb and forefinger. The heady smell of the fragrant leaf assaults her senses.</p><p>“That’s not entirely true.” Roslin’s green eyes search out her own and Kara is spellbound, as ever. The woman has an uncanny capacity for persuading people to see things her way, help her make impossible things happen. Kara herself felt it, that first time she really spoke to Roslin, the day she asked Kara to go back to Caprica and retrieve a mythical arrow so they could open some fabled tomb only thought to exist in legend. She’d done it again down on New Caprica, made people believe the Admiral would return for them, gave them all hope and strength to endure, even as the Cylons had tried to make an example of her. Kara has heard the tales, how Roslin had turned their abuse against them, wore her injuries like badges of honor. How her example inspired more and more people to join the insurgency.</p><p>Pity she hadn’t been able to turn that formidable willpower of hers towards rescuing a wayward pilot, caught in a Cylon’s demented fantasy of playing house, Kara thinks, then berates herself for the uncharitable thought.</p><p>Angry, with herself mostly, Kara takes it out on the woman before her, almost snarls as she spits words like bullets and watches Roslin flinch. “What? You like how you came back with a bum hip and a Baltar sized headache? Because I’m certainly liking the Casey shaped hole in my life!”</p><p>Kara sees the shadow of detention move behind that green gaze, notices how Roslin favors her bad hip as she carefully lowers herself down to the ground beside her. “I’m talking about before,” Roslin says, whispers almost. “About how we all got a chance to grow a little closer, I miss that. Remember we used to go and pick these?” She points at the still unlit joint.</p><p>“Up in the mountains near your imaginary cabin.” Kara’s heart softens a bit when she thinks of the place Roslin had picked for her cabin, how she had stood there in the middle of that green meadow and shown Kara where the living room was going to be, the kitchen and the bedroom. She remembers how she’d paced the clearing, gleefully pointing out where the couch would be, the table and the bed, how she herself had made a comment about inaugurating every room and surface that had them both giggling like mad for an hour straight.</p><p>“Yeah.” Roslin swipes off her glasses, tucks them into the V of her blouse. “That was a good place.”</p><p>“Too bad the Cylons came and frakked it up.”</p><p>Roslin smiles at that, a small, sad smile. “If they hadn’t, Baltar would have.”</p><p>Kara stops fiddling with the cigarette, produces a lighter and lights up. She takes a deep drag and passes the joint to Roslin.</p><p>“You should have stolen that election,” she says, just as Roslin takes a drag of her own. Kara thumps her back when Roslin gasps in surprise and starts violently coughing as she chokes on the sudden influx of too much smoke.</p><p>“Does everyone in the whole frakking fleet know about that?” she grumbles when she’s gotten her breathing back under control.</p><p>“Everyone with half a brain does,” Kara says, “so you’ve got nothing to worry about because everyone with half a brain voted for you and you still lost the election big time.”</p><p>Kara smiles despite herself as Roslin snorts at that. It’s such an un-Presidential sound, more like the woman she grew to like that first year planet side. She reaches for the joint, takes another drag and feels herself relaxing infinitesimally, feels some of the tension she’s held on to for so long leave her body. She leans her head back against the wall and contemplates the ceiling; beside her, Roslin does the same. For a long moment, they sit there in silence, passing the joint back and forth between them, blowing smoke rings and watching them lazily drift away and dissolve. Again, it’s Roslin who breaks the silence.</p><p>“You need to pull it together, Kara,” she says, never taking her eyes off the ceiling. “The fleet needs you.”</p><p>“The Admiral pretty much told me the same thing,” Kara replies. “Only he didn’t ply me with narcotics and general niceness.”</p><p>From out of the corner of her eye, she sees Roslin frown. “And?”</p><p>“And I don’t know if I can,” she confesses with a halfhearted shrug.</p><p>Roslin says nothing, turns towards her and regards her with those bewitching eyes of hers, it feels like she’s sizing her up. At long last, she smiles and nods her head, as if confirming something to herself. “You can, and you will.”</p><p>The quiet surety in Roslin’s voice is stunning, breathtaking, it bowls her over, turns her inside out and upside down, turns her into something more than the sum of her parts, something altogether different and new and yet so very familiar, so very quintessentially her; Starbuck at large. Kara casts bright eyes towards Roslin, feels the power of this woman, her driving force, almost like a visible, tangible entity, lifting her up, lifting her outside of herself.</p><p>“Okay,” she says, as if there were no such thing as doubt, no such thing as rage, fear or regret.</p><p>“Good,” Roslin says as she takes a final hit and breathes out slowly. Smoke wreathes around her head for a moment and then dissipates. She hands the last of the joint to Kara and climbs stiffly to her feet. “And next time you need me to kick your ass back into shape, go fugue out on a couch somewhere, I’m not as young or limber as I used to be.” Kara guffaws and Roslin smirks down at her, then turns on her heels. She stalks off and Kara smiles as she listens to the slightly off beat rhythm of her footsteps. She decides she likes it. Battle scars; they all have them, some more visible than others. The new, vaguely uneven cadence of Roslin’s stride makes it easier somehow to remember the woman behind the President.</p><p>Kara takes a last drag and bounds to her feet, grinds the smoldering remains of the joint into the deck plating with the heel of her boot. Then, remembering where she is, she guiltily picks up the mess and deposits it in a nearby trash receptacle. Across the hall, Duck and Nora grin at her, she offers them a crisp salute and marches down the hallway, Roslin’s words tucked securely away, down deep where only she can reach them.</p><p>You can, and you will. Such a deceptively simple thing to say but the trust and conviction behind the words is what she treasures as she leaves the memorial wall behind and heads towards the Pilot Ready Room.</p>
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